As I said before I have been talking with folks around here who have had extreme losses in their iris beds and there are three factors involved in each case. 1. amendments added such as food, organic matter and bought soil, we have even considered that the companies have changed the formulas they use in their products. 2. unusually cold winter, perhaps stressing/weakening the irises and 3. unusually rainy/wet spring.
The irises lost locally were well tended and fed and most in new beds. The ones that seemed unaffected were in older beds and had not received as much care as the new beds. We keep an iris bed with nearly 200 irises at our state capitol. These beds which are weeded, fed, watered, etc. also had a LOT of this type of loss..... and of course it took out the new varieties which are the most expensive and harder to replace. One of our CAIS members, who lost over 400 varieties, decided to give up growing irises and had a really sad spring. Then she decided that perhaps she would replace some and then decided to slowly replace them all. It is heartbreaking. My loss was only an introduction to the problem and not extreme as yours was, Brad. The photos of your sick irises are very sad. I hope this last winter was an anomaly and we never see anything like it again. In the meantime I am still going about tugging on iris fans and watching for any unnatural coloring or browning. The moment I spot something, that iris is coming up, having surgery if needed, getting a Clorox bath and being replanted in another spot..... and getting dosed with Arlyns recommendation of Listerine. As a matter of fact a bit of Listerine before a problem may not be a bad idea.
